Today is an important day in the Harvard world. It is both the day of the 2025 Commencement (the 374th Commencement) and the day of the scheduled permanent injunction hearing on the federal government’s attempt to ban Harvard from enrolling foreign students. What do they call it when seemingly unrelated things happen at the same time? The word escapes me.

I read this morning that President TACO might back off the foreign student ban to avoid the injunction. Will be interesting to see what will happen.

But clearly everyone at Harvard has been thrown for a loop. Take psychology professor Steven Pinker, who last week wrote a New York Times op-ed about what he called Harvard Derangement Syndrome (HDS), a disease modeled after another, called Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). I suffer from TDS, I believe, but don’t consider it a disease, but rather a rational reaction to irrational circumstances. HDS is something else.

HDS is a disease characterized by concluding that whatever Harvard does is somehow Satanic. It is highly transmissible, it appears, but can also lead to a reactive syndrome found in those affiliated with the university, like Professor Pinker.

How can I prove this? Here is a photo of Pinker from his Wikipedia page:

I saw Pinker this morning on MSNBC, talking about HDS. Here is how he looks now from a screenshot during his appearence:

I rest my case.

Things were very different when I graduated in 1964. The night before graduation was quite celebratory, and I didn’t go to sleep until what they used to call the wee hours of the morning. I was not expecting to be roused out of bed at about 6 a.m. by the sounds of bahpipes (I hate bagpipes), drums and fifes in the Kirkland House Courtyard with an “invitation” to come and march  to services at Memorial church. I went and ecumenical (1964 style) they were, and then we all marched again to our seats between the church and Widener Library for the Commencement exercises, tthrough which (in spite of it being an absolutely perfect weather-wise day) I think I mostly slept. Our commencement speaker was a big disappointment. He was an ex-president of Colombia, and I recall him being bald and speaking with a heavy accent. His name – Alberto Lleras Camargo. Here he is:

Ever hear of him?

Then, I remember going back to Kirkland House for lunch and diplomas. My mother, father, sister and grandmother were all there.

I went back for my 25th reunion. The speaker that year was Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of a Pakistani prime minister and a future  prime minister herself, only to be assassinated in 2007. She was a mesmerizing speaker, unbelievably inspirational. Her death was a great tragedy of the early 21st century.

The only other Harvard commencement I attended was at my 40th, where the speaker was Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General. My memory of that is that the 40th reunion class was seated so far back that I could neither see nor hear anything. But I am sure he gave a great speech. Why wouldn’t he?

That’s it for today. Think I will check MSNBC and see what happened at that hearing and who the 2025 speaker was, and what he/she/they said.